I love to laugh (loudly), cook, drink good beer, run long distances, hang out with my family (4 boys!) and friends and read novels. More than anything, I love to sit with people and have meaningful conversations.
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Our church is going through a season where we are facing difficult budgetary constraints for the first time in our history. And so we’ve been talking a lot about “why does this church matter?” This is (one) of my answers to that question:

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Last week I got briefly distracted on Facebook by a Washington Post article about the Noah’s Ark replica that creationist Ken Ham built in Kentucky. While the article was mostly about Ham’s intention to build more theme-park style Bible attractions, the article also reported that the “single largest source of funding was actually $62 million in junk bonds floated by the town of Willamstown [sic]…”

Groups like the ACLU have been critical of the project, specifically the organization’s discriminatory hiring practices that should render it ineligible for state funding.

“As a condition of employment, the museum and ark staff of 900, including 350 seasonal workers, must sign a statement of faith rejecting evolution and declaring that they regularly attend church and view homosexuality as a sin. So any non-Christians, believers in evolution, or members of the LGBT community — and their supporters — need not apply.”

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Yes, I read the entire statement of faith. And yes, it represents a very conservative evangelical view of Scripture, theology and the world. I think most of you who would read this post probably aren’t that conservative.

However, it’s a loud view. It’s a definition of Christianity that gets a lot of airtime both because of media interest and also because part of what makes evangelicals “evangelical” is their boldness about their faith, their willingness to “stand on street corners” and wear their faith on their collective sleeve.

But this is what concerns me: many modern people are rejecting Christianity because “Christian” to some has become synonymous with a strictly literal reading of the Bible, rejecting evolution and judging homosexuality (their word, not mine) to be a sin (among other things).

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This is why I believe the progressive evangelical church matters, and specifically why I believe that my church – Imago Dei in Peoria, IL – matters.

Listen, I’m not going to throw stones here. If you know me, you know I disagree with a lot of things in the Answers in Genesis Statement of Faith. I think some of their beliefs are harmful and unhealthy. But I don’t feel compelled to call them “heretics” or anything like that.

But I do hope to offer a counter-narrative. I do hope to say to everyone, “there are many ways of being ‘Christian.’” What makes us “Christian” is that we’re all followers of Jesus of Nazareth. We believe his words, his teachings, his “way” matters, and it’s still worth following, 2,000 years later. It’s worth talking about, it’s worth arguing about, it’s worth orienting our lives around.

We don’t agree on lots and lots of things. But even though we disagree, we can still worship together, we can still argue together, we can still serve the poor and take communion together. THIS is what I think Jesus means when he says, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

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So here’s why I think my church matters. In the midst of an increasingly polarized culture where being “right” is more important than being loving, kind or civil, our church insists on 3 things….

The unity that Jesus is talking about in John 17 as the most significant form of witness.

For the purpose of this post, it doesn’t matter how you voted last week. It doesn’t matter whether your Facebook feed is mostly red, mostly blue or mostly cat videos. This post is about perceptions.

Here’s the plain fact of the matter: the perception of most of the American public is that American Christians (specifically Evangelicals, but unfortunately we all get painted with broad brushstrokes) are anti-gay, racist, sexist, xenophobic and mean spirited.

Now, I know lots of you who claim Christianity as your faith. And I know plenty of you aren’t any of those things, but, sorry to tell you, that’s the perception. I know it makes many of you uncomfortable. It probably should. And it probably feels a bit unfair to many of you. And it may anger you a bit.

However you feel, though, Jesus said,

“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”

Sadly, the perception of Christianity in America is not “those people are radically loving,” but rather, what I outlined above.

Now, at this point in the conversation, it would easy to start pointing fingers at other people and point out the ways they aren’t loving to us. But if we’re going to love well, we don’t get to let ourselves off the hook simply because “they did it first.” The text doesn’t say, “love the people that are easy to love.”

Also at this point in the conversation, it is easy to climb a moral high horse and demonstrate how we are “right” on all the issues. I know you think you’re right. Newsflash: we ALL do. The text also doesn’t tell us to lead with “right” or “stand for truth” but rather to love one another as Jesus loved. (Context: he said this right after he washed their feet. Even Judas’ feet. Hmmm.)

To be clear, I’m not saying you should change your political views. Sure, I probably disagree with many of them – Christians have been disagreeing with each other about nearly everything for over 2,000 years now!

What I’m saying is this: even if you have “the truth,” and you believe it’s given straight from God’s mouth, it’s not an excuse to stop being loving. Period.

So, the perception is that Christians aren’t loving although we are called above all to be loving. The question is what are you going to do about it today?

How are you going to demonstrate the love of Jesus to the LGBT community? To immigrants? To people of color? They know your condemnation and discomfort with them. You’ve been pretty clear about that. But how are you going to demonstrate love? Hint: because you hold the beliefs you do, you’re probably going to have to go above and beyond the normal demonstration of love. I know that doesn’t feel “fair,” but that’s just kind of the way it goes.

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All of this intersects, of course, with my life as a pastor. I have conversations all the time with people who are leaving churches because they increasingly feel the church is out-of-step with them. They don’t feel welcome in our houses of worship. They don’t feel loved.

And it breaks my heart. I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind for the church.

I grew up evangelical. But these days, the perception of what “evangelical” is isn’t something that I can relate to. My friends in the OPEN network are working to recover evangelical by adding the word progressive to it. I think we’re doing some good work together, but it feels right now like a drop in the bucket. I mean, I know of all kinds of churches trying to live out a “just and generous Christianity,” but there’s not enough of us to change perceptions – at least not on a national scale. At least not yet.

What I do know is that at my church – Imago Dei Church in Peoria, IL – everyone is welcome. We don’t believe that agreement is the pathway to relationship, but rather love is. So whether you’re gay, straight, republican, democrat, immigrant, rich, poor, Catholic, Baptist, or however else you identify yourself – you’re welcome to worship with us, to enter in and become part of our faith community. And you’re more than simply “welcome” – as you enter into our community we will do our best to love well and move towards you in relationship. We won’t just tolerate you; we will embrace you as fellow seekers of Jesus.

Yeah – we’re not perfect. And sometimes our best intentions fall flat or are misunderstood, but that’s our goal. In the words of the late Leonard Cohen – who died late last week:

“Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”

I love to talk about preaching (or teaching or talking or lecturing, or whatever you prefer to call what I do every Sunday morning). When I get with other pastors I nearly always ask what they’re currently preaching or about their process. This post is about preaching. Read at your own risk. (HA!)

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“Did you ever imagine that what we call ‘vulnerability’ might just be the key to ongoing growth? In my experience, healthily vulnerable people use every occasion to expand, change, and grow. Yet it is a risky position to live undefended, in a kind of constant openness to the other — because it would mean others could sometimes actually wound you (from vulnes, “wound”). But only if we choose to take this risk do we also allow the exact opposite possibility: the other might also gift you, free you, and even love you.

But it is a felt risk every time.

Every time.” [emphasis in the original]

– Fr. Richard Rohr (w/ Mike Morrell), The Divine Dance

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Sunday morning, I grabbed a mostly-blank red journal off the shelf for a project I’m starting to work on. I wanted something small that I could keep with me and collect ideas as they came.

When I opened it, my eyes fell on a page where I had written the following title: “Things that are messed up in my head right now,” and on the page was a list of things I was struggling with in the late winter of 2015. Most of the stuff on the list I’ve worked out, worked through and am in a much better place. (Example: “Tired,” was a big one as we neared the end of our house-building project.)

I showed it to Jennifer, and I shared the list with a friend Sunday night in an unguarded moment. But today I ripped it out and threw it away. It’s too vulnerable. Even reading it all this time later makes me feel bad stuff inside. And while I felt a certain sense of accomplishment reading the list, it also represented some of the most broken, fragile places inside of me. Places I’d rather just hide most of the time.

The real truth? Sometimes I choose vulnerability, but other times I hide.

Like everyone else, I can vacillate wildly between “I want to be vulnerable,” and “I want to hide.” And sometimes, even mid-conversation, mid-sermon, mid-writing, I find myself changing my mind about how safe I feel and how vulnerable I choose to be. Or I regret sharing too much, or not enough.

But, I think the only pathway to growth is vulnerability. (I know I’ve said this before. But I have to keep reminding myself, so I’ll keep saying it in case it’s helpful to anyone else.) The only way to find my truest self is to say the true stuff with people who can carry the weight of it with me.

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I think church is supposed to be this kind of place. It’s supposed to be the kind of safe place where we can say our truest thoughts/feelings/intuitions about God, ourselves and the world we inhabit.

Everything I’ve said up to this point, I’m sure I’ve said before, but here’s the real point I’m trying to get to in this post — I think pastors are supposed to lead the way. We’re supposed to model what it means to live in an appropriately vulnerable way with our church. And, beyond that, I think we’re supposed to model it in our private lives as well, being appropriately vulnerable at the right times with the right people. Being gutsy. (But not foolhardy!)

This is what I love about recovery groups. They jump right past the images we all want to project and get to the vulnerability, “My name is _____, and I am an alcoholic.”

But, as Richard Rohr notes, this “always feels like a risk. Every time.”

The day I’m writing this is my study day. I intentionally keep my calendar clear on Tuesday mornings. I stay as quiet as possible, with as few interruptions as reasonable. I study the text, and then move towards teaching the text.

The temptation – every time – is to keep it clinical, theological, “factual.” But, deep in my bones, I don’t think that’s the “job.” I think the “job” is to take the text deep inside myself first — to pay attention to where the text is speaking to me, to ask what the text means in my context and then, with an appropriate level of vulnerability, to invite others into the same experience.

My hope is that somehow I can do both: I can be elegant and vulnerable. In some ways it’s easy to elegant. It’s easy to stand in the pulpit, and give the appearance of knowing everything cold and having it all figured out. But it’s simply not true. So, if I have to choose, I’ll choose vulnerability over elegance. (At least when I feel brave.)

Someone asked Jennifer recently about how she handles my big emotions. (Don’t worry, I was sitting right there. It was a friendly conversation. And yes, I have big emotions. I’m okay with that!) And in the moment she didn’t really have an answer. But, being on vacation together with no children gave us a lot of time last week to talk about lots of things and so we talked about it later.

Because I have big feelings, and I’m an extrovert, and I’m a “verbal processor,” (I don’t love this terminology, but I’ll get to that in a moment) the way Jennifer deals with my big emotions is that she provides a lot of space for me to talk.

And talk.

And think… and come back and talk again.

And mostly repeat myself.

And think some more… and talk again.

And talk some more.

Until, I get to the moment where I find the right words and there is clarity.

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My friend Peggy reads all my blog posts before I post. (Three cheers for Peggy!) I wrote a post a couple weeks ago that I still haven’t posted because at the time I wrote it, it felt vulnerable and raw. It centered around a quotation that I came across in a book. When she edited it the other day, she said – in the kindest way possible (she’s good like that) – “I felt like I knew all this about you. It didn’t feel as vulnerable to me, the reader, as it seems to feel to you. Which isn’t to negate your feeling of vulnerability…” And I told her, in response, “it wasn’t the idea that was vulnerable necessarily, because I’ve been circling around it for sure, but that quotation put a super-fine point on what I’ve been trying to say.”

In other words, I’ve been circling around an idea in myself, but I came across the perfect-for-now words that gave me clarity. This is that moment where your therapist asks the question or says something, and for just a minute, everything gets super-clear. SO GOOD!

(The post is sitting, I may still publish it later this week… we’ll see.)

Sometimes, I read because authors have a way of putting into words things that I’m struggling to put into words. And when I come across those things it’s like everything lights up in my brain. This is one of the reasons I love a good book discussion. To me, a great book discussion isn’t just about ideas, but it’s about how those ideas connect to each of us at a deep level and put words to what is also true of us.

It’s the same thing when I listen to the Robcast — Rob Bell, for me, puts things into words that help me get clarity. It’s why I’ve started reading more poetry; Mary Oliver has a way of putting things into powerful arrangements of words that move me and help me “find” myself.

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The reason I don’t like the term “verbal processor” is that I think we all need to find the right words for who we are, how we feel, and what we’re experiencing. Even introverts need spaces where they can find the right words.

This is what pastors, counselors, therapists, life coaches and authors do. They help us find the right words that apply to us. It’s healthy and good to find the right words. I don’t know if there’s any other way to growth.

This is one of the things I love about the Enneagram: it’s helped me put words to who I am and how I see the world. It’s helped me put words to relationships and people that I couldn’t understand before.

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When Moses encounters God in the burning bush in Exodus 3, one of the first questions he asks God is “what is your name?” Naming things is essential to understanding things. This is at the heart of theology: naming what we know about God. Then rejecting those ideas, and adopting new ones. Rinse. Repeat.

And you don’t have to do it out loud. I came home from vacation feeling connected to my wife in a way I haven’t in a long time, because we had lots of time and space to talk, to name things. But that’s not everyone’s pathway.

Some people need to get there with a counselor, some people need to read a book, some people need to use music to find their words. Some need to write. I know lots of introverted people who don’t love to “talk it out,” but rather, journal extensively their thoughts and feelings about the world in an attempt to capture and name what is true of them.

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So, what’s churning in you that’s currently beyond words? What do you need to do to name that thing? Who’s your “safe people” to help you sort it out? Who’s the trusted pastor or counselor who makes generous space for you to talk it out, ask questions? Who are your people who will let you be what you are, but help you in the journey of finding the right words?

Last Friday night, I spoke at our church’s Celebrate Recovery ministry. I gotta say, I love this community of people. There’s something refreshing about meeting with a group of people that starts with “I’m a mess,” rather than, “let me pretend that I’m all put together.” This is a rough sketch of some of the things I said.

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Step 8 (Alcoholics Anonymous): We made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Principle 6 (Celebrate Recovery): Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I have done to others except when to do so would harm others.

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I remember being taught growing up that all sin was a sin against God, that ultimately it wasn’t really about the “other,” but rather that I had offended a “thrice-Holy God” who couldn’t stomach my sin. There wasn’t much teaching that I remember from my childhood about making amends. There was a whole lot more about making sure we had squared up with God than making amends to people.

Since then I’ve talked to Catholics and learned that there’s more language in Catholicism about making amends – about doing penance for our sin. But again, saying “Hail Marys” or “Our Fathers” is more about shoring up one’s relationship with God than about making amends with a fellow human being.

But the geometry of the cross hints at something more. Of course there’s a vertical axis – but there’s also a horizontal one as well. To put a finer point on it, my sin hurts the people I love. Left unchecked, unamended, ignored, my sin erodes my relationships with people.

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The famous story of the Lilliputian Zacchaeus is particularly instructive here. In response to Jesus calling out his name in the midst of the crowd, of inviting himself to dinner at the house of a known “sinner,” Zacchaeus offers to give away half his wealth and four times whatever he has cheated anyone out of.

A simple “sorry, my bad,” doesn’t suffice.

Feeling bad about it doesn’t do anything either.

Nor does confessing it to God and saying special prayers.

The story of Zacchaeus is that when he is confronted by love (more on that in a minute), he responds by making things right with the people he’s hurt, to the best of his ability. Yes, the vertical is important — and Jesus declares Zaccheaus to be a “true child of Abraham” — but Jesus’ declaration is in response to Zaccheaus making amends.

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When I teach, I prefer to dialogue with my audience. I just don’t believe that I’m the full embodiment of wisdom on any given passage or that the Holy Spirit speaks exclusively to me. So, on Friday night, I opened up the floor and we had a conversation. And one of the attendees pointed out this startling realization: Zaccheaus doesn’t make amends because Jesus confronts him. Jesus doesn’t demand that Zaccheaus make amends. Rather, Jesus simply moves toward Zaccheaus in love. He calls him by name, invites himself to Zacchaeus’ home (a BIG deal in a hospitality-conscious, honor society), and Zacchaeus responds to love.

We think the we get the right behaviour out of people when we shame them, make them feel guilty, harangue them, yell at them, and put pressure on them to do the right thing. But Zacchaeus does the “right thing” when he’s confronted by the love of Jesus, the acceptance of Jesus just as he is.

We’re loved, then we change.

Too often — especially in religious institutions — we want change first, then we’ll offer love, which is just the opposite of how Jesus interacts with people throughout the gospels.

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Hmmm. Good stuff to think about, I think.

I walked away from Friday night surprisingly challenged and moved. It’s funny sometimes — when you’re “the speaker” and you open up the floor, you end up getting more from it than the people you’re speaking to, I think.

Last week, my social circles were abuzz at the tragic passing of a 35-year-old mother of two. We watched the Facebook updates over the last couple of months as she struggled, and then, last week her husband and children, surrounded by many in our community, mourned her passing. Also last week, an earthquake in Italy killed more than 200 people. In Turkey, near the Syrian border, a 12-year-old (!) suicide bomber walked into a wedding and killed 50 people. While closer to home, most of us shake our heads at the bluster of the American political process and wonder “Is this really what we’ve become?”

At the same time, there have been beautiful sunsets of late, vivid canvases of blue, orange and yellow across the sky and the weather has cooled, hinting at fall. A couple Sunday nights ago on an unseasonably cool evening, I sat with a few friends around the first fire of the year and it was simply gorgeous — beautiful weather, challenging and thought-provoking conversation. I’ve been running again, I’ve lost about 15 lbs since the middle of the summer and I feel good in my body — stronger, with a high sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I come home from work, and most days I run and then ride my “runner’s high” throughout the evening. Life is good and beautiful.

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These seem to be the twin rails that life always runs on. The beautiful and the tragic, walking hand in hand. Nearly every day we hold on to both; some of us carry the beauty and tragedy in our own bodies. (We met an amazing woman in Texas this summer who actually carries a heart pump in a backpack, and still found it within herself to smile, hike, and enjoy her beautiful family!)

But in the beauty and tragedy, I believe we’re faced with a choice. Some of us wallow in the tragedy — we get mired down in it, all we can see is the darkness, the underbelly, the pain and the struggle. And others of us refuse to acknowledge it. We deny it, stuff it down, numb ourselves with wine, television, and food; we surround ourselves with only best things, insulating ourselves from the tragedy, telling ourselves that if we just ignore it, it will go away, it will resolve itself.

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Richard Rohr says part of the journey towards maturity or wholeness is that we embrace what he calls the “tragic sense of life.” We embrace both rails — that life is always beautiful, and life is always tragic. Yes, there are evil people committing injustices in the world, but there are also heroes doing achingly good and beautiful things too.

Jason Silva, in his video “Existential Bummer” (one of many like it in his Shots of Awe YouTube channel), pushes us to the same idea in relationships. He says that when we love something/someone, we embrace Rohr’s “tragic sense of life,” in that we recognize the transience of all things — that nothing we see, nothing we experience will last. But instead of moving towards detachment as Buddhists teach, we “rage against the dying of the light” as in the Dylan Thomas poem above. Instead of detaching, we embrace both the beauty AND the transience at the same time. We love and we ache. Maturity recognizes it’s always both.

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Rohr writes that this embracing of the tragic sense of life is really at the heart of the Christian story — God is always taking the tragic and working in it and through it. God has not chosen in history to simply eradicate the evil, the tragic, the darkness, but to work surreptitiously through it. It’s a long quotation, but I love how he says it (the emphasis is in the original):

“If God has not learned to draw straight with crooked lines, God is not going to be drawing very many lines at all.. Judeo-Christian salvation history is an integrating, using and forgiving of this tragic sense of life. Judeo-Christianity includes the problem inside the solution and as part of the solution. The genius of the biblical revelation is that it refuses to deny the dark side of things, but forgives failure and integrates falling to achieve its only promised wholeness, which is much of the point of this whole book.

Jesus is never upset at sinners (check it out!); he is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners! Jesus was fully at home with this tragic sense of life.” (Richard Rohr, Falling Upward)

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So, which rail do you lean on? Are you denying, numbing, insisting only on the beauty of all things, or do you tend towards wallowing in the melancholy and tragic? What do you need to bring balance? How might you embrace the “tragic sense of life” today?

I think figuring out your life, figuring out what you’re supposed to be doing, “finding the truth for which you can live and die” (Kierkegaard), is sometimes about pulling at threads, following your curiosities. This post is about my own journey, about the threads I’m pulling at, and my curiosities and passions that I’m allowing to roam free.

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Thread #1…

A couple of years ago, I built a house in addition to my day job. It was really like having two full-time jobs. I think I once counted up the hours, and in the average week I was working 45 hours at my real job and almost 40 on the house. It was okay for a season; I have a high capacity for work. But in the end, I felt like it almost killed me. It didn’t, but I’m changed because of it.

A couple of years before that, I engaged in probably the biggest accomplishment of my life: I lost a lot of weight, became a runner (surprise!), and ran my first marathon. I don’t know that there’s been a single day of my life where I’ve felt such a sense of accomplishment as I did on April 27, 2013. I cried as I ran into Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois toward the finish line.

A couple of years before that, we had babies. Four of them in a 6-year span. And in the middle of that stretch, we left one church, went to another, then left that one to start a church with our friends — the one I’m still leading. And I started a cooking club and rode a couple of “century rides” (a 100+ mile bike ride).

And in the middle of all that, between baby #1 and baby #2, we built our first house — which for numerous reasons was a lot easier than house #2, but hard just the same.

And none of this is to brag or anything like that. I’m telling you all this stuff to say that although I think some people — especially pastors — define themselves by their job, I don’t. Yes, for my whole adult life I’ve led as a pastor in a church, but I’m so much more than that. I’ve always had lots of things going on the side, a lot of “irons in the fire,” so to speak. In fact, I kind of need to have several irons in the fire.

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Thread #2…

A couple of years ago, I was introduced to a new personality tool called the Enneagram. At first, I kind of rolled my eyes because I thought to myself — here we go, another Myers/Briggs, DiSC, Strengthsfinder test, where I’ll be put in a box, told “this is what you’re like,” and it will go into the drawer, just like the others.

Except it didn’t.

As I’ve studied the Enneagram over the last couple of years, it’s become the most formative tool I’ve ever used. It’s helped me understand myself better — why I think the way I think and do the things I do. It’s helped me understand my marriage better — why we “work” and why we sometimes crash up against each other. It’s helped me lead better, I think. And it’s helped me understand how our church leadership functions — why people do and say the things they do, why the dynamics are what they are, both because of the energy I bring into the room as the founding pastor and as the leader and because of the energies others bring into the room.

And while I’m trying not to be the annoying guy who psychoanalyzes everyone and everything, it’s in my head all the time.

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Thread #3…

Back in the spring, I started meeting regularly with two friends of mine, both of whom go to my church but who also who lead businesses. One bought an insurance agency a couple of years ago and the other is a VP at an advertising agency. Over the last couple of months, the three of us have talked a lot about leadership and about the Enneagram. And I’ve found myself all fired up talking to them and can’t wait until we get together again and talk about what it means to lead well as we grow in our understanding of ourselves and the teams we lead. It’s become one of my most-looked-forward-to meetings on my calendar.

One of those friends told me over breakfast at one of our meetings, “You are so fired up about this; you just seem to light up as we talk. It’s good to see.”

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Which leads me to this…

Early in the Spring, I was talking to my friend Tim Reist. Tim and I have known each other for more than a decade. We worked together for awhile, then he was my boss, then I left that place, and we’ve stayed close since. And we’ve had a lot of the same experiences. We learned the Enneagram together as a spiritual tool, we’ve both received certification as Enneagram instructors through Jerome Wagner, creator of the Wagner Enneagram Personality Style Scales (available online at www.wepss.com), and we both believe it’s a powerful, holistic tool that is useful in BOTH spiritual and business contexts.

Tim and I were having breakfast one morning talking about the Enneagram and how effective a tool it is, and he told me about some consulting work he was doing with a company on the Enneagram. I told him that I was thinking of doing the same kind of thing, which led us to this:

Tim and I are forming a partnership together and are developing a curriculum and coaching business to help leaders and their teams understand themselves better, using the Enneagram, so they can communicate more clearly, make decisions more effectively and thereby improve their culture.

One of the things we’re doing this fall — starting now — is recruiting people for our first cohort. This will be a group of eight to ten leaders who are willing to sign up and journey together. The experience will entail three 4-hour sessions (October, January, March) with a one-on-one consultation between retreats to help people contextualize what they are learning. And while our focus is on helping businesses, because we both come from the nonprofit world, we hope to work with nonprofits as well.

So, all of this is to say — if you are a leader in the Peoria area, or you’re willing to travel to Peoria a couple of times, we’d love to have you. If you’re just intrigued and want to know more, please email Tim or me; we’d love to pitch you on why we think the Enneagram is the best tool for your sphere of leadership.

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[A note for my fellow Imagoans: I’m not leaving. Sorry, you’re stuck with me. I love teaching and leading our church. I love our Sunday mornings together. I love the push and pull of doing our theology together; doubting, questioning, thinking, deconstructing, reconstructing; it’s all like a drug to me and I’m not going anywhere. So, while I’m going to be doing some new stuff, it will be on the side. And, of course, I’ll be talking about the Enneagram at church as a tool for spiritual transformation (for free!). And as with everything in else in our community, if you have questions, let’s have a coffee.]

Some people suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). That is to say, sometime in the winter months here in the Midwest, when there has been cloud cover for something like 100 straight days and the ground is brown and frozen and there are no leaves on the trees and it gets dark at 4:00 in the afternoon, some people struggle with depression.

My SAD is a little different. My SAD starts to settle in around the first of August, when it’s hot and steamy outside. It’s not so much about the actual season for me but rather about the metaphorical season.

Every year, when school lets out in late May, I’m so happy. It’s so good to throw off the shackles of regular bed times and being on kids’ case about homework. The freedom of the first days of summer are so life giving! And because I have a highly flexible job (both a blessing and a curse sometimes) I can take a day here or there to do stuff with my family, or I can shift my hours, going in early, so I can leave early to get to a baseball game.

But by the beginning of August, the lack of structure, the lack of rhythm starts to work against me. The freedom that was so invigorating and life giving in late May becomes the very thing that keeps me from the disciplines that nourish my soul.

And so, to that end, today I’m celebrating the return of my children to school. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, and we’ve had a great summer together. I think Jennifer and I find ourselves enjoying our children more and more all the time. But I need them back in school so I can get myself back into the rhythms that make me healthy and productive.

I need to get back to the rhythm of reading. For all of my adult life, reading has been the thing that stimulates my creativity. It’s the fuel that helps me formulate my thoughts about the things I teach and the conversations I have with people. Reading – both fiction and nonfiction – inspires me to see the world, myself, and God differently. I’ve been in a reading slump that pre-dates the summer. But I’ve been carving out time in the mornings to read again. And I was shutting off Netflix and reading in the evenings again, until the stupid Olympics happened. But that will be over soon.

[Disclaimer: in the Dean house, we are Olympics junkies. We’ll watch anything. People jumping on a trampoline? Check. People riding dancing horses? Why not, as long as the horse gets the medal? The television is never on in the Dean house as much as it is every couple of years during the Olympics. So, I have nothing against the Olympics, except that it does screw up my reading discipline!]

I need to get back to the rhythm of good discussion. One of the things I know about myself – and I know this isn’t true of everyone – is that I need regular, life-giving, good discussions in my life. I need groups of people around me who want to read, talk, think and interact about ideas. I think it’s related to the rhythm of reading, but in time, reading without discussion becomes a bit empty for me. I’m not sure what this looks like in this season of my life, but I’m playing with some ideas in my head.

I need to get back to the rhythm of regular exercise. The combination of kids’ baseball, a pretty severe hand injury, and oppressive heat have done their toll on my rhythms. Once our summer travel ended and my hand healed, I started back on this one and since the first of August, I’ve been aggressively working out. I can’t tell you how good it is for me to drown myself in sweat, to push my body to the point of throwing up. It’s good for me to feel the ache of well-exercised muscles. It’s good for my body, and I don’t exactly understand the connection, but it’s good for my emotions and for my soul as well.

And related to exercise, I need to get back into a rhythm of eating well. Right now Jennifer and I are doing something of an extreme diet. And I hate wacky diets, but there is something good in this season about being a little extreme. It’s a good detox from a summer full of feasting. I read an author a couple years ago (I think it was Shauna Niequist) who suggested that there should be seasons of feasting and seasons of fasting in our lives. The problem is, at least in our circles, it seems that it’s always a season of feasting. So, embracing a season of fasting, embracing some austerity in what I drink and eat is good.

And finally, I need to get back into a rhythm of prayer. And by prayer these days I mean ALL the ways that we communicate AND commune with God. For me, that doesn’t mean long lists, or wordy prayers. It more like written prayers – The Prayer of St. Francis, Thomas Merton’s “Prayer that Anyone Can Pray,” Celtic Prayers – and quiet meditation/contemplation. In the last week it’s meant reading Richard Rohr’s Yes, And…in the mornings quietly, slowly and then giving myself quiet time to ease into my day.

So, happy back-to-school day.

I hope that you, like me, find and pursue the rhythms of your life that sustain you and make you whole.

One of my sons started this thing almost as soon as he learned to talk. When we put him to bed, just before we closed the door, he’d yell out to us, “I love you more than you love me.” What he wanted from us was an argument. He was asking for us to reaffirm our love for him. I don’t know where he picked this up; it’s not something we’ve ever done with any of our other kids, but somehow it spilled out of his psyche.

And I totally get it.

I was talking to some friends a couple of weeks ago, telling them how in my worst moments, I am looking for approval from other people – signposts to know that I’m loved/accepted/desired. And one of my friends said to me, “Where is God in your self doubt? Isn’t being loved/accepted/desired by God enough for you? You’re a pastor for goodness sake! Get yourself together, man!” (Okay, I made up the last two sentences. That wasn’t actually what was said, just what I thought to myself.) Ouch.

I choked it down, but in a word, no. Not really. In those darker moments, it’s not enough for me to be loved by an immaterial, Spirit being. I need real-life words, touches, affirmations. At least I need those things unless I actively work at it. I know, based on my personality type, I need a good support structure, but when I do the work, I need it a little less; I find myself a little less needy, a little more self-assured.

Don’t feel sorry for me. We all have our internal struggles. The more I study the Enneagram and the more I talk to people, the more I’ve come to understand that even the people who project “I’ve got it all together,” really don’t. (And in fact, the more they project that image, the more unhealthy they probably are.)

Your struggle might be like mine – believing that you’re loved. But your struggle might be believing in yourself, or lack of self-confidence, or apathy, or self-loathing, or not caring. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is what you’re doing about it.

For me, I literally have to sit on the floor in silence and concentrate on love. I have to keep coming back to the place in my mind where I am wrapped in God’s love for me. I think I’ve said before, either here or in a teaching, that my perception of God has always been “perpetually disappointed with me.” And no matter how much I fill my head with knowledge about God’s love, I have to practice the experience of being loved by God to change anything inside of me.

And often, I get away from my practice. I get away from my silence and solitude, contemplative prayer, meditation, whatever you want to call it. But, one of the most helpful things I’ve learned in the past year or so is that it’s not about accomplishing something but returning to the practice that matters. I won’t ever be able to quit doing the work; I will always have to return to my practice, and maybe that is the accomplishment.

So, here’s the question: What is the work you need to do? What’s your practice? What is going to help you overcome whatever your struggle is? Do you know? Maybe you need help finding your practice, maybe you need to talk with a spiritual friend, maybe talking with a spiritual friend IS the practice.

Even now, 9 months after it’s over I could tear up if you started asking the right questions about the state I was in, what I was feeling at the time, and the healing that happened in me.

Let me name some convergences that have intersected in my life over the past year, starting in Sabbatical and moving forward.

Brene Brown, Rising Strong. Taught me the ideas of “the story I tell myself” and the importance of “rumbling with my story.” So good. So important to my own good mental/spiritual/emotional health.

The Enneagram. I’m fully “in” on this personality tool. I would talk about it all day, every day, if there were people to talk to (hint! hint!). I’m a Type 3: “the Achiever.” That affects how I see everything. And I fall in the heart triad, where I’m always going to be dealing with my feelings about people. That’s just the way it is.

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward. I just re-read this book about spirituality in the second half of life last week. And everything in his book resonates deeply with person I hope to become. (Someday.) (When I grow up.)

We had a small exodus of people who left our church in the months after I returned from Sabbatical. Many of them left without saying goodbye, they just quit coming. Part of me gets it. That’s part of church leadership. People come, and people go. But at another level, it’s caused me to distrust almost all of my relationships. It’s rattled my cage quite a bit – more than I probably am willing to acknowledge most of the time (see my Enneagram Type).

There’s other stuff.. But this isn’t the right place.

The net sum however, of these convergences is that at 42, I’ve really had to lean into the interior journey, to understand myself better. Those of you that are long-time readers, you already know all this. And I’m not broken in the same way I was a year ago, but I’m choosing to stay in the journey – to keep pushing myself to stay curious.

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“There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.” – Thomas Merton

Frankly, I still feel like I’m kind of a mess some days as I try to sort out how I think and how I feel, how I understand myself and how I discover more of God. And most of the time, no one else but Jennifer knows. She sees me brooding, hears my hurts, listens to my questions-without-real-answers. She patiently listens as I rumble with my story and reminds me no matter what I feel that she loves me and is committed to me.

But if Merton (and pretty much every other spiritual writer I’ve read) is right, the only pathway forward to wholeness is through a deeper understanding of the self. Even John Calvin said “It is not possible to know God without knowing yourself. It is not possible to know yourself without knowing God.” And so I’ve ventured in some forums to try to say my raw truths. And most of the time, I feel deep levels of regret and embarrassment, what Brene Brown calls the “vulnerability hangover.”

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And then, this afternoon, reflecting on my 1-year-Sabbatical-iversary (it’s Monday as I write this), I read Glennon Doyle Melton’s post “I need to tell you something” on her Momastery blog about her divorce. It’s beautifully written. It is honest and brave and true and sad all at the same time. And then, there was this one line, where she’s writing about why she feels the need to write a post announcing her divorce that caused my to catch my breath:

“I will be messy and complicated – and I will show up anyway.”

Yes.

I know that it freaks out some people when I choose to be messy and complicated. And it probably drives some people away, because we all love our shiny, manicured false images. But here’s my manifesto – and I say this not because I think I’m particularly good at it all the time, but rather, I say it as aspirational – as the person I want to be:

I, Charles, will be messy and complicated and I will show up anyway.

And I will choose messy/complicated because I believe it’s the ONLY way forward to wholeness. I was talking to a friend about this and I said, “to me, the only people who insist they aren’t messy and complicated are the people who might as well wear a sign on their heads that says ‘UN-self-aware.’” We’re ALL messy/complicated, whether we know it or not. I guess I just want to own my messy/complicated and so I can move through it and learn and grow.

So I will choose to be messy/complicated in my marriage, in my parenting, in my leadership, in my relationships. And I will continue to fight my desire to run away, to hide, to sulk and to bury my feelings in ice-cream and whiskey. This doesn’t mean I always need to do this externally, but sometimes it will. (God help me discern the difference!)

Listen, I promise, messy/complicated won’t be a permanent state. Messy/complicated is a place, but you move through it as you rumble with your story, come into new knowledge of yourself and learn new ways of seeing, new ways of being in the world. And it doesn’t mean I’ll be messy/complicated with all of you either. I’m discovering the right times, right places, right people to be messy/complicated with, where I feel safe, affirmed, and then gently pushed.

And I guess, if it makes people uncomfortable, or it makes me less desirable as a pastor, leader or friend, then so be it, because this is the only road to wholeness. It’s the only road on which I will find my true self and thus find God. This road is more important than all the other things. (Again, as I edit, this is more aspirational, but I’m working towards it.)

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But this post isn’t just about me. Mostly, I’m good. I’m not in any kind of crisis or major turmoil. But rather, I’m trying to embrace messy/complicated as a way of life. You move through it, you circle back around, you move through it again. You learn and grow and keep learning. There is no such things as “arriving.”

I’m writing because I want to say to you, “stay in it, show up, embrace your messy/complicated and ‘do the work.’” I’m inviting you to choose messy/complicated because sooner or later life will hand you messy/complicated and either you will prepared for it, or you’ll have to catch up to it when it comes. I’d rather be prepared.

So, today, schedule that coffee with the friend/pastor/therapist/spiritual guide/guru you need to get messy/complicated with. And be brave, my friends. We’re in it together.